Have a Heart: The Vegan Challenge

No, I don’t believe that carnivores are heartless human beings. I eat meat, and I haven’t been condemned to a life in the underworld because of it. But what about vegans? Can vegan food ever taste better than cardboard or chalk dust? I’m about to find out.

For the next month, I’ll be sticking to a vegan diet. For those of you who don’t quite know exactly what a vegan eats (or doesn’t), I’ve come up with one simple rule. I call it the Heartbeat Rule: If it comes from something that had a heartbeat, vegans won’t eat it.

That includes the obvious meat, milk, eggs, yogurt, and cheese. And yes, it also includes ice cream, honey, and chocolate. (Chocolate? Chocolate?? Can I actually survive this next month without chocolate???)

There’s a few more surprising foods that vegans won’t eat, which I’ll be sharing along the way. Trust me, these get interesting!

Why try a vegan diet? I’m not an animal rights activist, I’m not a plant-hater, and I’m not allergic to dairy.

I wanted a new challenge, one that I could get excited about. I’m always up for a new cooking adventure, and veganism puts me just outside of my comfort (food) zone. It means I have to forego my delicious daily cereal (it has honey), my standard ham or turkey sandwiches (the obvious deli meat), and my nightly nonfat Greek yogurt and granola (dairy, and honey in the granola).

It’s also challenging me to cook and bake with ingredients I’ve never really used. Flaxmeal? Tempeh? Seitan? (For the record, Microsoft Word tells me those three words don’t even exist!)

While this is a big challenge for me, there’s also one in it for you. No, I don’t expect you to become a vegan for a month with me. But I am challenging you to keep an open mind. The meals I’ll make will lack eggs, butter, milk, and all other ingredients we think make food taste good. You don’t have to prepare every dish I document, but do consider than vegan dishes can taste better than cardboard!

So have a heart, keep an open mind, and follow me on this new cooking adventure!

Comments

Wow! We will be following this story. Some of my friends at work are vegan, and I honestly don’t know the details of what vegans can and cannot eat. So this will be educational and good for us all! Thanks for sharing your experiment!

My pleasure! I’m very excited about this new challenge. I’m still learning about what constitutes as “vegan,” but I think the basic rule I came up with sums it up nicely. As I continue to learn, I’ll share more about what I discover about allowed/discouraged vegan foods.

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